She had rounded a corner when a sudden rush of wind seized her and all but threw her against a beggar who, tin cup in hand, stood against the wall.
The sight of the beggar caused her to halt. There was, she remembered, a dime in her side coat pocket.
She looked again at the beggar, then thrust her hand deep for the dime. The beggar seemed pitifully, hopelessly forlorn. His battered hat was drooping with snow. His long gray hair was powdered with it. The hand that held the cup was blue with cold. In a sad and forlorn world he seemed the saddest and most forlorn being of all.
She had the dime between her fingers and was about to draw it forth when another look at the old man made her start. A second look was needed before she could be convinced that her eyes had not deceived her. Then, with a sound in her throat suspiciously like a sob, she dropped the dime back in her pocket and hastened away on the wings of the wind, as if she had seen a ghost.
“Impersonations,” she whispered to herself, as a chill shook her from head to foot. “Impersonation. He called it that. He would do even this for his friends!”
The beggar standing there in the storm was none other than Dan Baker.
“I’ll call Kay King,” she said to herself, with another shudder. “I’ll call him to-night. I’ll tell him he may have those bags. And when he brings me the money I shall give it to Dan Baker. And he must accept it, every dollar.”
She found Angelo at the studio when she arrived. No one else was there. Swen, he explained, had gone out on some sort of work. Dan Baker was doing his “impersonations.” Again Jeanne shuddered at that word.
Angelo had greeted her with the warm affection characteristic of his race. Now he led her to a place beside the fire.
After that neither seemed to find words for small talk. Each was busy with thoughts that could not well be expressed. Angelo, too, hailed from a warm and sunny clime. This wild storm, ushering in winter so early in the year, had sobered his usually buoyant soul.